American Transcendentalism

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AmericanTranscendentalism

• Mind over matter

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Commonalities

• Wrote non-fiction
• Essay, diary, and sermon
• Not art, not argument, but much of it was
  intended to persuade

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Notes

• Transcendentalism was named by those who didnt
  like it
• Most prominent Transcendentalists
• Margaret Fuller
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau
• Secondary Transcendentalists
• Herman Melville
• Walt Whitman
• Emily Dickinson

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What is Transcendentalism?

• Belief that the human senses dont tell us
  everything we need to know
• Mind over matter kind of people
• Transcendentalists split from the American
  Unitarian religion
• Believed there was something beyond normal mental
  faculty they called it reason
• Reason higher mental power that enabled human
  beings

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Reason

• We might call it conscious
• Also, sometimes called
• Spirit
• Mind
• Soul

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Immanence

• Transcendentalists believed in immanence
• The idea that God is present in every human being

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Transcendentalist Characteristics

• Most grew up around Boston
• From old New England families (before 1700)
• Most Unitarian most trained for Unitarian
  ministry
• Most men attended Harvard
• Most were writers (poems, essays, speeches, etc.)
• All supporters of the moral reform
• Temperance (no alcohol)
• Abolition (no slavery)

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Summary Significance

• Not primarily a writing movement but more of a
  religious movement
• Americans began to culturally separate themselves
  from England